Context of the assignment

Every year, end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) generate between 7 and 8 million tonnes of waste in the European Union which needs to be correctly managed. Directive 2000/53/EC on end-of-life vehicles (ELV Directive) aims at minimising the environmental impact of ELVs and to improve resource efficiency in the EU.  It sets clear quantified targets for reuse, recycling and recovery of the ELVs and their components and pushes producers to manufacture new vehicles without hazardous substances (in particular lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium), thus promoting the reuse, recyclability and recovery of waste vehicles.

The Commission has a legal obligation to “review the ELV Directive, by 31 December 2020, and to this end, shall submit a report to the European Parliament and the Council, accompanied, if appropriate, by a legislative proposal”. Moreover, the ELV Directive “should be reviewed and, if necessary, amended, taking account of (its) implementation and giving consideration, inter alia, to the feasibility of setting targets for specific materials contained in the relevant waste streams. During the review of Directive 2000/53/EC, attention should also be paid to the problem of end-of-life vehicles that are not accounted for, including the shipment of used vehicles suspected to be end-of-life vehicles, and to the application of the Correspondents' Guidelines No 9 on shipments of waste vehicles”.

The evaluation will cover the application of the Directive in all Member States and the measures adopted by the Member States to address implementation issues with particular attention to the aspects where implementation has been more challenging, such as the “missing” ELVs. The evaluation will also cover all years of implementation of the Directive, from 2000 when it was first adopted until the present.

The evaluation will address, as required by the Better Regulation Guidelines, all standard evaluation criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance and EU added value. When assessing the criteria, the evaluation will take due account of results of the 2015 Ex-post evaluation of the Five Waste Stream Directives^*, which assessed the degree to which the current waste legislation is “fit for purpose”. It identified two main challenges for the ELV Directive: illegal ELV treatment operators and illegal ELV shipments. It will also take into account the Compliance Promotion Initiative to assess the implementation of Directive 2000/53/EC on end-of life vehicles (the ELV Directive) with emphasis on the end-of life vehicles of unknown whereabouts. Other issues related to the coherence of the Directive with other legislation have also been identified, particularly with the Waste Framework Directive, which was amended in May 2018, and with the Directive on the registration documents for vehicles (Directive 1999/37/EC).

Other issues, which will also receive attention in this evaluation, are:

• The emerging challenges from the increasing use of electric and connected vehicles, including interactions with other relevant legislation, such as the Batteries Directive and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive.
• The automotive sector as a significant source of plastic waste, as recognised by the EU’s Plastic Strategy, which includes actions to assess regulatory or economic incentives to increase the uptake of plastic recycling from ELVs.

* Ex-post evaluation of Five Waste Stream Directives Accompanying the document Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council reviewing the targets in Directives 2008/98/EC on waste, 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste, and 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste, amending Directives 2000/53/EC on end-of-life vehicles, 2006/66/EC on batteries and accumulators and waste batteries and accumulators, and 2012/19/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment; SWD/2014/0209 final;